Balke Warp

Best known for his Magnetic North Orchestra, pianist and composer Jon Balke has a background that is rich with global influences and diverse musical stylings. Trained as a classical pianist in his youth, Balke was playing with Masqualero on Bande à Part (ECM, 1985) by the time he was eighteen. That recording, in the company of Arild Andersen, Nils Petter Molvaer, Tore Brunborg and Jon Christensen, set some enduring musical relationships in motion, with all but Andersen going on to play in Balke's Oslo 13 debut, Nonsentration (ECM, 1992).

Jon Balke’s unique solo work blurs distinctions between composition, improvisation and sound design as Discourses further develops the methodology introduced with the Norwegian pianist’s Warp album. Integrated in the resonant sound of his piano music are “layered soundscapes” of processed material which Balke describes as “distorted reflections and reverberations from the world.” Underpinning the project are some thoughts about language, and the notion of discourse and dialogue as fading concepts in an era of confrontational rhetoric. Balke: “In this work I had the framework of language with me from the beginning. As the political climate hardened in 2019 with more and more polarized speech, the lack of dialogue pointed me towards the terms that constitute the titles for the tracks.” Discourses was recorded at Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo in December 2019, and produced by Manfred Eicher.